


Avoid.

by Fleshwerks



Series: Tantalus in Phlegethon [8]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, alcohol consumption, hmmm, uh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-02-06 07:22:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12812523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fleshwerks/pseuds/Fleshwerks
Summary: They've done this before, this avoiding game, when months or even years have parted them. It's difficult getting used to each other again, seeing what's changed. This time, a lot has changed.





	Avoid.

Same song and dance as the last time, and the time before it, and the time… Zevran knew to expect it, thought himself used to it, but every time he’d been proven wrong, and a week into his stay on this cold mountain without his Warden to warm him was getting lonely.   
  
The corridors of Soldier’s Peak were covered in cloth tapestries to soften the echo of footsteps and cheer up this place that had seen more death than most fortresses in Ferelden. There were no plants, Zevran noticed, though he’d seen a few empty pots with dry soil and dead plant matter that the fortress’ denizens had forgotten to take care of. Nothing grew in this cold darkness, seeds were killed before they could sprout. This castle was a sepulcher.    
  
The one in charge of it all slithered away into its abundant shadows whenever Zevran had called out to him when he caught the flash of the hem of his golden robes disappearing around the corner.   
  
So he spent his days walking the ramparts, missing the warmth of Antiva, its torrential rains and expanse of silver sand where nothing grew, poisoned, then purified by the same ill that had nearly taken Ferelden, but given him his Warden. He played cards with other Grey Wardens and sparred with the nimblest of them in the courtyard. He played with Chad the Mabari whose once chestnut brown face was now growing grey around the brows and the muzzle, and who tired much more easily. And he drank.   
  


On the eighth day he had been drinking since morning. Time went faster that way, brushed past him softer and now he found himself wandering the hallways, stopping before tapestries. New ones, all of them, not speaking of Sophia Dryden and her rebellion and last stand. Strange, he thought, how Sophia’s ambition cost her life, and to the Wardens their base in Ferelden. The Grey Wardens shall not meddle in politics. And yet now there was a Grey Warden on the throne of Ferelden growing too big for his breeches. Zevran lifted the bottle to his lips and drank, and moved to the next tapestry. The coronation of Bhelen Aeducan. Then, a horde of cloth-woven darkspawn. The defeat at Ostagar, a Dalish clan standing proud, death, coronation, death, anointment, redemption and glory for Loghain mac Tir. Not one of them about the Grey Warden he loved, as if he didn’t exist, was wiped from history, and in his drunkenness and loneliness it almost seemed real. Shadows nipped at his heels, kissed his calves as he delved deeper into the castle’s dark and damp heart.    
  
Where are you, he thought.   
  
The door at the end of the hallway he was in was locked. He presumed that this was the laboratory, and though no place in this castle had been forbidden to him, a locked door made his stomach sink in some sort of nebulous dread. Tonnes of old stone squatted over his head, pushed up from under him. He contemplated knocking on the door, lifted his knuckles on the dark, iron-bound wood, but then let his hand drop. It was near pitch dark here, even his elven eyes could only make out an outline of his hand. He sighed, and shoved the near-empty flat bottle between the waist of his trousers.

Another cold night in a cold bed. But suddenly he heard steps, and the quiet rustle of a heavy hem on stone. Far away, but the corridor had no nooks to hide in, no doors to slip behind. Zevran straightened up and started walking, but stopped in his tracks when he recognised the shape of his Warden in the dark. He called out, and the Warden nearly jumped, looking in the direction of his voice, then quickly turning his glance aside, anywhere but Zevran’s face.   
  
_ Hey,  _ Lea Surana said meekly, squared his shoulders and started walking again even though each footfall was hesitant.   
  
_ I was looking for you,  _ Zevran said, tired of this dance, emboldened by drink and a desperate heart.   
  
_ Mm.  _ Lea smiled a weak smile, eyes still fixed to the lower right corner of his field of view.  _ Work never stops.  _ The Warden pulled the key ring from his belt, fumbled with the keys whilst awkward silence filled the space between them, and smiled an awkward smile at Zevran’s direction when he finally found the right key and unlocked the door. Zevran realised that Lea was as much caught in a bind as he thought he had been.    
  
Light flooded the corridor as Lea Surana pushed the door open.   
  
_ I left my journal,  _ he said simply and stepped in, though he left the door open. An invitation. Zevran squinted, rubbed his eyes and crossed the threshold. He remembered this room, it’s where they had found Avernus all those years ago. The room had been rearranged but it was still a laboratory, filled with strange devices, walls covered with plain tapestries where notes had been hung with bone pins, and yarn connecting some notes with others. Lamps filled with magic illuminated the room - not the Warden’s magic, someone else’s. At the far end of the room on a wooden table laid a body, breathing but otherwise still, ravaged by the darkspawn taint, black bruises all over her skin, veins running black with poison.   
  
_ Volunteer,  _ he heard the Warden say, and quickly turned away.  _ One of ours. _ __  
__  
_ And?  _ Zevran asked. The smells filling the room were sickly sweet and made his stomach turn.   
  
_ Nothing we can do for her,  _ Lea said.  _ One last thing to do. It’ll require blood. We’ll let her go as far as possible before she loses herself to the music, but before she does, I’ll see what it is like. I want to hear what she hears. _ __  
__  
Zevran stood silent.   
  
__ Got what I came for,  Lea said with hollow blitheness and tapped at the leather covers of his journal, the one of the same three that Zevran had given him before Lea left Antiva seven months ago to whip the dog on the throne back into submission, and convince the dying Warden on the table to make one last sacrifice for the Order instead of throwing her life away in the bowels of the Earth.   
  
They left the laboratory, Lea walking ahead, Zevran just behind him, watching the outline of Lea’s tense shoulders as they found their way back into the lit halls with colourful tapestries on the walls.

 

_ You’re not in any of these,  _ Zevran started.   
  
_ Hm? Oh,  _ Lea said and stopped in front of the one that depicted a woman in a pool of blood, head lowered in contrition and prayer. He pulled his hair forward, obscuring his face from Zevran in an awkward, obvious move, and pulled the heavy, fur-trimmed Grey Warden cloak tighter around him. Zevran had seen him wear the armour before, but never the colours.   
  
  
_ That’s because one day when they’re ripped down and stored away in some damp cellar or burned on a pyre, I don’t won’t burn with them. What I am building will be safe in its facelessness and namelessness.  _ He turned away and kept walking, and Zevran followed until they reached the main hall. But instead of heading to his chambers, Lea instead leaned his weight against the wicket gate.   
  
_ Grab one of those,  _ Lea said and motioned at Grey Warden cloaks that hung off the shoulders of wood crosses topped with Warden helmets, standing sentinel.  _ You’ll put it back later. Let’s walk.  _ And without looking at Zevran, he leaned his weight against the wicket gate and it opened sluggishly and with a groan.

 

Zevran did as told and followed the Warden, who was now clutching his journal against his chest. They crossed to silent courtyard in silence, snow crunching under their boots and frigid full moon glaring down at them.    
  
_ Lea.  _   
  
The Warden kept marching.    
  
_ Lea! Look at me!  _ He said again, louder, but when the Warden didn’t stop or even acknowledge his name being called, Zevran lurched forward, grabbed his shoulder, and turned him around, then seized him by the jaw, forcing him to look, only for Lea to close his eyes and press his lips into a tight, stubborn line. But Zevran stared at his Warden, white-faced in the moonlight, dark veins snaking up his neck, jaw, and the shadows under his closed eyes were so dark that it seemed as if he’d taken a beating.    
  
_ They get worse when I haven’t slept or eaten in a while,  _ Lea said apologetically, eyelids fluttering.   
  
_ Look at me,  _ Zevran asked again, still holding Lea’s jaw in an iron grip.   
  
_ Let go of me,  _ Lea replied. His lids had stopped fluttering, his mouth had relaxed. Zevran obliged. Once, Lea Surana had taught him how to keep him calm. The following years honed his experience, and now he knew intimately how far he can go before a strong and steadying touch became an act of aggression.   
  
Slowly the Warden opened his eyes, then widened, gaze flitting over the planes of his face, mouth a little open as he scanned Zevran’s face for signs of change, new scars, new wrinkles, all the things he hadn’t been there to see happen. Zevran watched the familiar sight of relief and calm wash over his lover’s face when he found him not much changed at all.   
  
_ It just reminds me of how much time I’m losing. How many moments are gone. I have so much to do and so little time, so much to fit into a scant decade or two. Every time I see you after months or a year apart, I am terrified of seeing change. Your first grey hairs, Maker knows I’m already getting mine.  _ __  
__  
So the Warden said to him two ago during one of their avoidance dances. But now it was Zevran’s turn to be afraid and scared sober by the taint that painted the Warden’s veins black.   
  
__ Like what you see?  He chose to say instead, years of burying negative emotions under measured cheer serving him well. 

 

_ Always do.  _

 

Zevran shuddered. The night was still but standing about made the sun-cooked Antivan an easy prey to the cold.   
  
_ So what does this mean for you?  _ Zevran asked.    
  
_ This?  _ Lea pointed a finger at his own face. He fell quiet, and started walking again.   
  
_ Have you talked to the others here? How much have they told you?  _ Lea asked.   
  
_ Not a thing,  _ Zevran replied, following his Warden.  _ You Grey Wardens and your secrets. _ __  
__  
_ Well, that is their prerogative, but I can still tattle. We are hearing the song. All of us. The King too.  _ Lea paused, waiting for a reaction, but when none came, he continued:  _ tonight though I can give you this: something big is going to happen. I don’t know what, I’m trying to find out.   _ Lea stopped and turned to face Zevran.   
  
_ I have no idea where to begin with this,  _ he said.  __ I’ve been tearing at the edges of this, but Orlais isn’t talking, Weisshaupt isn’t talking. I…. 

He was quieted by Zevran’s hands on his shoulder that pulled him tightly against him, teeth clattering next to his ear from cold.   
  
Somewhere deep down Zevran felt angry at the Warden for his failure to send a letter in time, and for running from him once he arrived in person. Precious moments wasted, but this, he judged, was not the time. They’d talk this out later, when they’d said their hellos and grieved together over the news his Warden had shared.    
  


**Author's Note:**

> A prompt fill for Tumblr, unedited.


End file.
